You can have your cake and eat it, too. That was the promise of President Donald Trump's "peace through strength" pitch on the campaign trail, promoted most loudly by his former national security adviser Mike Waltz. By looking powerful and fearsome, the United States could get what it wants from its opponents without either costly wars or uncomfortable diplomatic concessions.
After all, the Biden administration's combination of moralizing words and military intervention had been the worst of both worlds. And Trump's outside-the-box approach allowed him to snatch some low-hanging fruit that his predecessors failed to. Over the past month, he has freed the last living American hostage from Gaza, cut a deal to get U.S. forces out of Yemen, helped broker an Indian-Pakistani ceasefire, opened negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, and brokered a Russian-Ukrainian prisoner exchange.
Trump's tour of the Persian Gulf two weeks ago was supposed to be a victory lap for his diplomatic efforts. The president declared the end of "neocon" meddling and announced the lifting of economic sanctions on Syria, while Arab leaders announced huge new investment deals in the United States. But since then, the Trump administration's efforts to end conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine seem to have stalled—and Trump himself is getting frustrated.
